Female approached by man

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨feelings67@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I was just sitting at the mall taking a break from mall walking. A man walked over to me when I wasn’t even looking up. He said "I haven’t seen you here before. " I said I wasn’t really here to talk to people and got up and walked away. He said he would leave, he may even have said sorry. I said I was ready to leave anyway. In retrospect I think he may have just been slightly mentally challenged so I wish I had been a little softer, he did not turn out to be aggressive. Looking for suggestions on something still clear and firm but more polite? This scared me for some reason, I think how fast he walked up and sat down near me.

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hyperion626@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
I’d consider how you’d react to a woman in the same scenario and do that.

Otherwise, consider how you’d like someone to react to you approaching them and saying that.

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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Well, you got up. Point made. No reason to fear anymore.

I would not exactly answer to what he said, but say a different thing, maybe like “You want to sit here?” (polite on the surface, stating the obvious, but implicitly putting the focus on on his action, not yours)

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celeste@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think it's good you listened to your instincts and were firm. If he has a disability that makes social things complicated, being obvious was a favor to him. If he did have bad intentions, your immediate willingness to leave showed you weren't an easy mark.

There are probably good scripts for this, but I don't know them. I just think you should know it doesn't sound like you handled it badly.

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- feelings67@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I appreciate it!
  
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Hello_there@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
You know, somehow we have got to get back to the place where strangers can talk to each other in public places. I understand your position and why you needed to do that. I just regret the fact that conversations in public seem to be a lost art.

My dad is one of those people who makes friends everywhere he goes - talking to people in elevators, etc. and people react well to it. Everybody can't be that outgoing and shouldn't be. But I think the % of people who can do that now is going to be much less than it was in the past, which is a shame.

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- cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  It is a shame, but it’s not simply individual personal attitudes that’s causing this. People are afraid of strangers. The problem is, there are too many cases where that’s actually justified now.
  
  The bad people have in fact ruined it for everybody. They have made it legitimately dangerous to have this sort of openness and trust in most slices of society, at least for people who look and behave a certain way, or were born certain ways. The problem is, under the influence of traditional media and social media and government and all the other dysfunctional and corrupt systems in our society, we’ve started tolerating the actually bad and dangerous people in society, instead of punishing them. Often we’re actually celebrating them, and in some cases even electing them President. It makes it almost impossible to sustain a functioning society when bad people are allowed to do bad things with impunity or worse, reward for their behavior. This is what’s causing the breakdown of society. Trust is hard to build and easily broken, and now it’s been broken and it seems like fewer and fewer people are interested in trying to rebuild it.
  
  Why the fuck would women trust anyone in this society when allegedly half of the people in the world’s most economically powerful and culturally influential country voted for a party who is now occasionally saying women shouldn’t have the right to make decisions about their own bodies or even have the right to vote. These horrifyingly regressive attitudes are not just extremist throwaway comments because they are being paired with actions in the US and around the world, and they have serious consequences.
  
  And yes, I am allowed to bring politics into this, because society is literally made out of politics. That’s what politics is, it’s the primary ingredient for making civilization function and it defines how it functions. Our aversion to discussing contentious “politics” is what has allowed society to decay to the point it has. This is not about being “woke” this is about being intelligent enough to want to live in a civilized society. Civilization requires not just moral boundaries but also the willingness to treat those who push at or exceed those moral boundaries as an existential threat, because they are. If you want your society to be good, you cannot tolerate evil. The boundaries and definitions are not always clear, but we must grapple with them as they stand, not avoid them. Grappling with these issues is the day-to-day work required to make civilization function. It is not a failing that we will always have these issues and always struggle with these issues, but it is a failing if we stop trying to struggle with them, because then we’re no longer keeping society functioning. Politics is life. Life is politics.
  
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- NathanRanch@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Most people are told to be afraid because of TB/Twitter and internalize it. That makes them, partly, losers. The people that go out and make human connections usually know this, and do it to remind people that real life isn’t on the internet or in their heads. I do it too sometimes for fun, other times I’m like the rest of them.
  
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  - AskewLord@piefed.social ⁨23⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    or real life expereince with people like the OP have taught us it’s not worth it.
    
    Frankly, I don’t want to interact with people who assume I’m mentally ill for being friendly to them. And where I live at least, that’s the way a lot of folks react to friendly conversation if you are like standing in line with them. they act like you’re trying to assault them.
    
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- Pat_Riot@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  I talk to folks around me all the time. Standing in line for checkout at a store or something? I’ma talk to you.
  
  I don’t walk up on folks out of nowhere, but if we are in near proximity for more than a minute, I’ma talk to you.
  
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Truth_Hurts@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
People have to shoot their shot somehow.

It’s fine to not be interested, neither one of you did anything wrong.

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BooBees@fedinsfw.app ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You’re fine, he may have been mentally challenged, he may be immersed in a mall walking social group that has formed there and thought it was a risk worth taking based on previously successful or milder experiences, but you are well within your rights socially and everything else to be firm and curt and avoidant. I applaud your continued assessment and concern, it shows you actually care about people’s feelings, so imo you’re fine and will do great with whatever options you go with in the future. If you want my suggestion for a slightly easier refusal, I’d maybe just say “I really do appreciate your being social and being welcoming, I’m just not up for socializing today, sorry” and that should do it. But I think you did fine.

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- feelings67@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s good phrasing, thank you!
  
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Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
‘I’m not really here to talk’ and leaving isn’t rude at all, don’t sweat it. If you had screamed at him that he was a creepy POS or something then you’d have a good reason to feel bad if he had some kind of intellectual/developmental disability, but you didn’t, and even if he does there’s a point where you have to learn you’re not a cute kid who can just walk up to people at random and start talking to them anymore (or at least not have everyone be as receptive to it).

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cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It is totally reasonable to react the way you did. You don’t owe it to other people to be comfortable around them. They should be thinking about what they can do to make you comfortable, ideally before they do it, and this guy clearly wasn’t. If it is because of some disability or something that’s totally plausible too, but that’s his problem and his cross to bear, not yours. You weren’t rude or cruel, but you were uncomfortable, and you’re allowed to be. If he is capable of learning from that, maybe he will, and I think it would be a good lesson for him to learn.

You don’t have to feel bad about it, it makes sense that you regret how the interaction turned out after the fact, but that regret comes from the additional information and processing time you had afterwards to think about it. If you want to reconsider that guy as a possibly decent fellow who deserves another chance in retrospect that’s alright, and maybe if you see him again you can extend a little more tolerance for his behavior if you think it’s safe. But it doesn’t mean you were wrong in the first place. In general, you should trust your instincts and listen to them, they’re just trying to keep you safe, and better safe than sorry. You should not have to be scared of a man sitting down next to you, but the way some men act in the world we live in, you have every right to. It’s sad, but it’s realistic, and you are not responsible for solving this problem on society’s behalf. When we’ve built a society where you can have a man sit next to you and feel safe about it, then that’ll be great. But we’re not there yet.

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- AskewLord@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  This is insane.
  
  Other people are not psychic. They cannot read people’s minds.
  
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- feelings67@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Thank you for your thoughtful reply! I’ve worked in some dangerous settings and had to be a bit firmer and these suggestions have been helpful while still being clear!
  
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Miller@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I think people who are socially inept are often advised to strike up innocuous little throwaway conversations with strangers in public places to improve their ability to interact. Unfortunately this is also exactly the MO of killers in CSI programmes.

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AmidFuror@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Thank God I'm not single.

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NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I worked with adults (and children) with developmental disabilities and this was a common thing we dealt with. We would take groups of guys out into the community to work and get some socialization. Since I’m a man, I usually worked with guys while women worked with women.

A lot of these people typically don’t get out into the community often so we were there to help them understand what was appropriate and what wasn’t. It was somewhat common for some guys in our groups, and we usually knew who was more prone to it than others, who would do this so we’d have a closer eye on where they were. We also had some who had sexual assault records and we made sure to be very, very close to them in proximity and not letting them out of our sight while ensuring that they had the same opportunities to have a normal life in public as possible.

We worked with both high functioning and low functioning populations, that is to say those who you can tell have some type of disability are lower functioning, as we referred to them back in the day and there may be some more politically correct term used now, with higher functioning population being less recognizable and more like anyone else you’d see in public, usually people with autism.

I say all that to say that if this man had a developmental disability, just from what you said here about how you handled it sounds fine. You didn’t sound rude or violent or anything. Just sounds like you were firm and polite and aware of your own safety which is great.

Most women who were approached by our population handled it very well. I can’t think of a time when someone didn’t and acted inappropriately in return. I think most women could tell seeing our groups and then noticing us as the staff coming along to redirect the guy and prompt him away from what he was doing that was inappropriate.

I remember one guy we had in particular who had a deep fascination for black women (he was Asian but at the same time would talk about how much he hated “Mexicans” and was part of the KKK) and would almost cross the line multiple times with women any chance he got. Not like violently attacking anyone but just overly verbally creepy. But even with him and how aggressive and creepy he’d be, women were very kind and polite but firm and did almost like you, just tried to make their escape. We’d make sure to be near him as much as possible but sometimes he’d get away from our sight and go do things like this. I remember one time he was very much into one woman but she was interested in my coworker who got her number and that set him off into a rage when he saw them talking and her handing him something.

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one_old_coder@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Looking for suggestions

With a username (feelings67@lemmy.world) that matches \w+\d+ and has no comments since its creation (2 weeks for you), I would tell you to lurk more because we are flooded by spam and your account is suspicious.

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